I managed two crafting goals today.
First, I pulled out my swift and ball winder to wind a whole bunch of yarn. Seven skeins to be exact, all of them Undercover Otter yarn from my Clan of Igor subscription. Six of them are (hopefully) destined to be a sweater:
A really bright sweater! The main body will be pink, with contrast cuffs of the yellow, and racing stripes in the blue down the center of the sleeves and center back. I’ll show you more… after I’ve swatched and made sure the colors won’t become a muddy mess when washed together. Otherwise, we’ll just quietly forget I said anything, right?
The seventh skein was “Budget Cuts” and I’m using one of the two I purchased to crochet my Empower People 2020 bandana. If you as a US citizen and aren’t already registered to vote, this is my reminder to you to do so – elections are important and this November is especially important*. If you have the time, consider looking into becoming a poll worker, as I understand there’s shortage and this could further hinder voting.
A little about the choice in yarn: first, I mentioned previously that I don’t have a ton of purple, and any DK I have is already tagged for specific projects (also alpaca is not a great choice for a bandana which should be very all-purpose). I had a couple choices in fingering weight skeins, but none were straight up PURPLE. I considered doubling the yarn, but the pattern is very adaptable and since I’m more often too hot than too cold, substituting fingering for DK seemed logical.
Anyway, I liked how the Budget Cuts gets more purple the further away from the purple, blue, and red variegated yarn you get. But I also like the symbolism in the name. In the US, I think we’ve spent a lot of time working to cut money from the wrong budgets (social services, education, and the things that build up a community) and resisting the need to start cutting from other budgets (military, police, prison system, or the things that impose punishment). I’m a fiber artist and crafter. I believe good is done in the world by building up, creating and sharing, not tearing down, locking away and punishing. Investment in the latter should be minimal and the need to reach for those as a sign we failed somewhere.
To take a less charged example – we create building codes, electrical best practices, and construction materials regulations to reduce the number and severity of fires. Yes, we still need firefighters, because yes, there will still be fires. But if there’s an increase in fires, people investigate the cause and look for a fix, instead of just creating more and more fire stations put out the increasing number of fires. As a result, we live in a time where most people living in their homes don’t need to fear a house fire to the same degree as our ancestors. I’d like to see us, as a society, take that same approach to so many other problems we face.
So anyway, I settled on Budget Cuts as the colorway of choice among my not-quite-purple yarns. Since I haven’t crocheted in a while, I opted for the crochet version of the bandana. AwesomeE already has one done, so I need to pick up the pace a bit!
Are you registered to vote? And are you making a bandana?
*If you read the blog regularly, you probably have a bit of an inkling regarding my political leanings. While I personally may hope people with opposing views stay home, as a US citizen I feel incredibly strongly that every adult US citizen should be able to vote and that voting should be easy, no matter who you are, what you think, or what you’ve done with your life to date.